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On Tax Day, the Republican National Committee announced it is suing the IRS for stonewalling Freedom of Information Act request for documents

On Tax Day, RNC Sues The IRS

On Tax Day, the Republican National Committee announced it is suing
the IRS for stonewalling Freedom of Information Act request for
documents about the tax agency's politicized scrutiny of conservative
and Tea Party groups.

The RNC filed the request on May 21, 2013, in an attempt to expose the
documents and emails surrounding agency’s process in handling
applications of non-profit organizations such as conservative and Tea
Party groups.

“We’re filing this suit because the Obama administration has a
responsibility to be transparent and accountable to the American people.
The IRS has a legal obligation to answer our inquiry for these
records,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “On Tax Day especially
Americans deserve to know whether they can trust the agency to which
they’re sending their taxes.

After the RNC filed the request, the IRS has requested several
extensions, which has already delayed the release by 226 business days.

WASHINGTON
– The Internal Revenue Service is prepared to rewrite a proposed rule
regulating the political activities of non-profit groups to address
complaints from the right and left that it goes too far, IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen said Monday.

"In all likelihood we will
re-propose a redefined rule and ask for more public comment," Koskinen
told USA TODAY's Capital Download. It's a process he predicts will take
"until the end of the year and beyond" to complete. The proposed
regulation of groups known as 501(c)(4)s drew a record 150,000 comments
before the deadline in late February.

He said the new rule would
take into account backlash from conservative Tea Party groups as well as
some liberal advocacy organizations that the agency's proposal –
intended to address concerns that the tax-exempt groups were engaged in
partisan warfare – would bar, even voter education and registration
programs.

He was interviewed on the eve of Tax Day, the April 15 deadline for Americans to file their returns.

"I
think we have to take all of that into consideration," Koskinen told
the weekly video newsmaker series. "There are very thoughtful comments
and concerns, and one of the questions that has evoked a lot of comment
is, once you define what political activity is, to what organizations
should it apply in the 501(c) context and how much of it should be
allowed? All of that is going to be very important."

Efforts by
organizations to get the non-profit designation, which doesn't require
them to disclose their sources of funding, sparked a firestorm over
allegations the IRS gave tougher scrutiny to organizations with names
that signaled an affiliation with the Tea Party movement than it did to
progressive-sounding groups. That is the subject of a half-dozen
investigations on Capitol Hill.

When he took office in January,
Koskinen told reporters he believed the IRS was "on the home stretch" of
the inquiries – an assessment he acknowledges now seems optimistic. He
said complying with documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, chaired by California Republican Darrell
Issa, will take years to complete and produce "a lot of irrelevant, vast
volumes of material."

Was the committee on a fishing expedition?
"I wouldn't want to second-guess what their requests are," he said,
adding that the agency would comply with them.

He said he was
"pleased" that Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat,
told him last week that his committee would issue its report "in the
relatively near future," perhaps as soon as June. "We'll take a look at
the findings and any recommendations they have, decide if there's
anything beyond what we've already done that we need to do, and then we
need to move forward," Koskinen said.

Koskinen, 74, came out of
retirement to head the troubled tax agency after a career that included
stints as a top manager at Freddie Mac, the Office of Management and
Budget and the District of Columbia government.

He calls today's
task tougher than a previous assignment leading the federal government's
response to Y2K, the transition to the year 2000 that threatened to
create havoc with the world's computers. He says his current job is more
difficult because the IRS has been unable to get adequate funding, even
though money spent on enforcement generates revenue.

"If you gave
us the $500 million of our sequester funds (slashed under automatic
spending cuts) we would have given you back $2 to $3 billion more, and
people shrug and move on," he said. The agency now employs 10,000 fewer
people and receives $900 million less in federal funds than it did four
years ago.

Opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which requires
the IRS to assess penalties on most taxpayers who fail to get health
insurance, may be one factor complicating the agency's requests on
Capitol Hill.

"We're sort of in the middle a political bulls-eye,"
he said. "Together with the Affordable Care Act, the issues surrounding
the qualifications of 501(c)(4) social-welfare organizations has been a
battle in public media for the past year. The combination of the two
has made getting more funding difficult."

He warns the IRS could
be headed toward disaster when new responsibilities, including the
Obamacare mandates, kick in a year from now. "If we keep going at this
level, with the increased responsibilities, at some point we risk
crippling the agency," he cautioned, "and that won't be good for the
government and it won't be good for taxpayers."

One consequence
already is a reduced chance of being audited. "They're lower than they
have been," he said, then added: "I wouldn't encourage anybody to depend
upon us not auditing them. As I've told people, the roulette wheel is
spinning."

According to the Dept of Labor, FOIA requests are supposed to be responded to within 22 days, not counting weekends and holidays. They can stall some, but not a whole freaking year.

Congress has been way to timid in the various investigations they are holding. They have no gonads. They should have sued the gov't months ago.

From DOL website....

VI. How Long Will It Take to Answer My FOIA Request?

Under the statute, federal agencies are required to respond to a FOIA request within twenty working days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays. This period does not begin until the request is actually received by the component that maintains the records sought.

Under the FOIA, a component may extend the response time for an additional ten business days when: (1) the component needs to collect responsive records from field offices; (2) the request involves a "voluminous" amount of records which must be located, compiled, and reviewed; or (3) the component must consult with another agency which has a substantial interest in the responsive material or with two or more other components of the Department of Labor. When such an extension is needed, the component will notify you of this and offer you the opportunity to modify or limit your request. Alternatively, you may agree to a different timetable for processing your request.

An agency component may toll (or stop) the time from running to respond to a FOIA request. Tolling can only occur if the request is properly made and the clock has already started. The number of times an agency component can toll the time is limited. An agency component can only toll the 20-day clock in two situations: a) one time when the agency is waiting for information it has requested from the requester; or b) as many times as necessary in order to clarify any issue with the requester regarding fee assessment.

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